Democrats Push Climate Change Debate

Partisan approaches to America’s climate
policy have been an unavoidable fixture of news headlines for the past month. Unusual
weather patterns have served to give fuel to the climate change fire. In
January, a polar vortex drove temperatures to below -50 degrees in some areas
in the U.S. and proceeded a 70-degree swing over the course of four days in
Chicago, according to local media. Weather news is second only to news of
climate policy in terms of frequency and volatility of swings.

Democrats hope to leverage this
focus and what they learned from the 2018 midterms to drive a wedge and advance
their interests. But when public discourse is focused on issues that President
Trump can dominate, such as immigration and national security, Democrats struggle
to earn air time. Hoping to control the narrative moving into the 2020 elections,
Democrats believe their best chance to run the tables is with the climate
change debate.

Recent Republican attempts to
challenge progressive positions have served to reinforce this belief among
Democratic strategists. President Trump recently unveiled his Presidential Committee
on Climate Security to be chaired by William Happer. The Princeton physics
professor made news when he equated the representation of environmental
pollutants with the treatment of Jewish people during World War II. During a
CNBC interview Happer said, “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like
the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a
benefit to the world, so were the Jews.” As conservative lawmakers scramble to repackage
their messaging, Democrats are using the opportunity to expand the discussion.

Rhianna Gunn-Write, one of the
architects of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Green New Deal, said, “We have to
throw the full might of the country behind this [climate change] problem if we
are going to solve it.”

She went on to outline a new
strategy for the use of climate policy as a campaign tactic. During a recent
interview, Gunn-Write said, “If we can talk to people and connect climate
change to the things that they care about, that’s a huge potential of climate
voters that you just activated.”

She also discussed linking health
problems and income inequality to climate change. Gunn-Write further asserted
that institutionalized racism is a consequence of climate change saying, “66
percent of asthma deaths in the county are women, 73 percent if African
Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, black children are three
times more likely than white children to die of asthma, and 80 percent of
Latinos live in an area with at least one air pollution violation.”

Impacts to minority communities, Gunn-Write
says, are further evidence of a need for more radical environmental policy.
Preempting Republican responses, she asserted, “These are the same populations
that, let’s be honest, conservative groups and fossil fuel companies are going
to target talking about job loss,” she says.

Popular opinion seems to be on
her side. A December 2018 joint study by Yale and George Mason University reported
that 73 percent of Americans think global warming is happening, ten points
higher than in 2015. The study also found that 46 percent of Americans say they
have personally experienced the effects of global warming while 48 percent believe
that U.S. citizens are being harmed “right now” by global warming. Advocates of
the Green New Deal also find solace in the study’s findings that 66 percent of
Americans don’t believe that it’s too late to address global warming, a
position not shared by most climate scientists.

While public support for climate
remediation policy seems to be increasing, radical approaches debated on Capitol
Hill still face stiff challenges. When approached by climate activists Democratic
California Senator Dianne Feinstein met questions on the Green New Deal with
criticism. “There’s no way to pay for it,” she said to teenage activists. “That
resolution will not pass the Senate… I’ve been in the Senate for over a quarter
of a century, and I know what can pass and I know what can’t pass.” Pragmatic Democrats
are the only lawmakers with concerns.

Legislatures in oil and gas
producing states also greet climate change policies with lackluster enthusiasm.
This is because royalties, taxes and other fees from oil and gas drive some
state budgets. And no state is more dependent on this money than New Mexico.
Earlier this year, New Mexico Tax Research Institute found that in fiscal year
2018, the oil and gas industry contributed nearly one-third of the funding for the
state’s schools, infrastructure, healthcare and public safety. That equates to $2.2
billion of the state’s $6.81 billion recurring revenue with an additional $1.5
billion going to other state and local funds.

Wyoming faces a similar economic
dependency with 20 percent of gross domestic product coming from extractive
industries according to the U.S. Department of Interior. Despite similar
economic situations, New Mexico and Wyoming each have diametrically opposed
congressional delegations; New Mexico’s five members of congress are all
Democrats and Wyoming’s three are all Republicans. While Democratic lawmakers
may hope to reduce emissions, they are less ready to forgo the sizable
contributions made to state and local operating funds.

That didn’t stop the recent introduction
of climate change policy at the state level in New Mexico where some Democratic
legislators are proposing to install a four-year moratorium on fracking. State
budget analysts estimate this would result in a $2.21 billion-dollar loss over
those years. How these losses would be offset is a question opponents and
voters alike are asking, not just in New Mexico but across the country. Despite
progressives’ superior message discipline, important questions still remain as
the 2020 election draws nearer.